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Wrong Way! for ColecoVision - very early WIP


5-11under

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Hello all,

 

You're driving down a 5 line highway (well, 6 in this version, which is a week old :) ), minding your own business, when suddenly a barrage of cars start driving toward you. Soon you realize that you're going the... Wrong Way!

 

Here's a very early (ie. barely functional) WIP for a potential future release of a ColecoVision game. Timeline is unknown, because I'm trying to approach this project very methodically, and I'm not working on this all the time. As this is a very early WIP, I realize there are a bunch of bugs, idiocyncracies, etc., and that the other cars are merely blue rectangles. :)

 

Anyway, at the start, press a number from 1 to 9 for the speed of the other cars, then use the joystick to go left/right, as well as accelerate/brake. Alternately, you can use the left fire button to accelerate, and the right fire button to brake. Arrive at the destination in time, and you can play the next stage... which is exactly the same (WIP, remember).

 

I'm thinking this will be mostly a game of avoiding the vehicles and other obstacles, but feel free to make gameplay suggestions.

 

Thanks,

5-11under

Car025.zip

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Nice looking start to the game - I like the concept. Bugs etc. aside I have some suggestions that could improve gamplay (most of which you probably have already thought about):

 

1. The blue cars look stationary relative to the road surface, i.e. they travel down the screen at the same rate as the white lines. Would look more authentic if they look like they are moving down the screen faster than the white lines.

2. It's a very wide road, how about making the far left and far right lanes as potential parking zones with the odd stationary car.

3. Have the road narrow occasionally to add variety and increase difficulty.

4. How about having the odd side street appear with a rogue car that passes across the screen left-right.

5. Increase the number/frequency of cars as the game progresses.

6. Could be fun to feature a sidewalk that you can mount to avoid the cars (particularly in the higher levels). Then you have to avoid the pedestrians, hot dog vendors etc. on the sidewalk.

7. How about adding bonuses that you can collect while driving, e.g. food, money, fuel etc.

8. As well as sound effects, try and add a catchy, racey tune as background music.

9. Have a horizontal line on the road at the end of the level for a visual marker. At the moment the level finishes without you realising you actually reached the end of the road.

 

These are my immediate thoughts anyway. Hope they help.

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Nice looking start to the game - I like the concept. Bugs etc. aside I have some suggestions that could improve gamplay (most of which you probably have already thought about):

 

1. The blue cars look stationary relative to the road surface, i.e. they travel down the screen at the same rate as the white lines. Would look more authentic if they look like they are moving down the screen faster than the white lines.

2. It's a very wide road, how about making the far left and far right lanes as potential parking zones with the odd stationary car.

3. Have the road narrow occasionally to add variety and increase difficulty.

4. How about having the odd side street appear with a rogue car that passes across the screen left-right.

5. Increase the number/frequency of cars as the game progresses.

6. Could be fun to feature a sidewalk that you can mount to avoid the cars (particularly in the higher levels). Then you have to avoid the pedestrians, hot dog vendors etc. on the sidewalk.

7. How about adding bonuses that you can collect while driving, e.g. food, money, fuel etc.

8. As well as sound effects, try and add a catchy, racey tune as background music.

9. Have a horizontal line on the road at the end of the level for a visual marker. At the moment the level finishes without you realising you actually reached the end of the road.

 

These are my immediate thoughts anyway. Hope they help.

 

Hi Ikrananka,

 

Yes, I've thought of some of those, but there's a few new ones there, like sidewalks, music, and side streets.

BTW, you can get the cars to go at a different speed by pressing a different number at the start. Pressing 1, like you did, makes the blue cars at at standstill. Pressing 2 or higher at the start makes the cars travel faster, relative to the lane markers.

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

5-11under

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pdr stands for pdroms, a site which reports about homebrew console/handheld stuff. due to recoding there is only a very basic version with news at pdroms.de a very alpha version of the new page with downloads and other crap is at pdroms.org (user: beta / pass: wurstsalat) - but pretty useless for the public atm...

 

update:

a mate over at http://www.dev-fr.org posted about it too ^^

update2:

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=75236 (maybe it still shows up at the main page dcemu.co.uk when you check it ^^)

Edited by Kojote
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How about multiple ways of scoring? Points could be awarded for near misses, plus bonus multiplied by how many near misses you can get in a row (potentially subtracted for early wipe outs? ) so that there's strategy and risk involved, instead of only basic twitch play.

Edited by A Sprite
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BTW, you can get the cars to go at a different speed by pressing a different number at the start. Pressing 1, like you did, makes the blue cars at at standstill. Pressing 2 or higher at the start makes the cars travel faster, relative to the lane markers.

 

Doh!! I should have read your first post properly!!!!

 

How about using the initial difficulty selector to select a RANGE of car speeds, e.g. 1 = stationary to 10mph, 2 = 10mph to 20mph, rather than them all having the same speed. Could also throw in a random very fast car that crosses lanes (maybe being chased by a police car) or it could be an ambulance. Just some random thoughts coming to me.

 

Keep up the good work - I still enjoy playing your squares game.

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Hi Harvey,

 

Lookin' good so far! Others have made some very good suggestions. Definitely need an engine sound where the pitch and speed increase as acceleration increases. Agreed on the simple but catchy background melody playing. Maybe an "engine heat" meter that will slow the car down once it gets in the red? Player must run over gas pumps periodically or else run out of gas? Maybe a power up like a cannon that will allow the car to shoot?

 

....DRIVING CONTROLLER SUPPORT? :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: Had to throw a "hard" one at ya!

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Thanks, everyone, for the responses so far.

 

I'm not too keen on adding gas cans and other bonuses, though. Mostly, I just want to drive, and beat the clock. Maybe I could add time bonuses along the way... . This would be as good as fuel, but simpler, in that I wouldn't need to add a fuel indicator & keep track of it while driving.

 

Scott, as far as the driving controller goes, the problem is that it only has one button, typically used for acceleration. I'm more inclined to (try to) add Super Action Controller spinner support, in which case I would have access to buttons for both acceleration and braking. I could set up the driving controller to accelerate on first press, then after a release, the next press would be brakes, and so on, but I'm afraid I couldn't be responsible for people driving into things in real life... . ;)

 

Thanks,

5-11under

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  • 3 weeks later...
Thanks, everyone, for the responses so far.

 

I'm not too keen on adding gas cans and other bonuses, though. Mostly, I just want to drive, and beat the clock. Maybe I could add time bonuses along the way... . This would be as good as fuel, but simpler, in that I wouldn't need to add a fuel indicator & keep track of it while driving.

 

Scott, as far as the driving controller goes, the problem is that it only has one button, typically used for acceleration. I'm more inclined to (try to) add Super Action Controller spinner support, in which case I would have access to buttons for both acceleration and braking. I could set up the driving controller to accelerate on first press, then after a release, the next press would be brakes, and so on, but I'm afraid I couldn't be responsible for people driving into things in real life... . ;)

 

Thanks,

5-11under

 

have you ever considered porting spy hunter to coleco (assuming coleco doesn't have one)...

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  • 2 weeks later...

A few years ago, I spend some hours on a prototype that looks very similar. The demo was made for Texas Instruments TI-99/4A in assembler, of course using the very same graphic chip present in the Coleco, and made available as cartridge for use in MESS and the likes.

 

_Vertically_ I used all available sprites (4) for the main character (the car), but would still be able to have smoke, flames, bullets etc. coming out of the front and rear of the car (using sprites). The idea was then to have obstacles like trucks, oil, boxes and sitting ducks, scrolling "in the lanes" (not as sprites, but as character patterns).

 

2qk31xx.gif

 

:)

Edited by sometimes99er
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Hello all,

 

Just so you know, this game is on indefinite hold (ie. pretty much killed). Besides some technical issues regarding processing speed (high number of characters and sprites "scrolling" smoothly... and not wanting to reduce the frame rate or smoothness, or get into sprite flickering), the game isn't turning out to be as much fun as I had originally envisioned.

 

Fortunately, the game I've just started thinking about will use part of the same game engine... it just won't be a drive-fast-and-avoid-the-cars game. I'll keep you posted... but probably not until at least the basic gameplay is functioning.

 

Thanks,

5-11under

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